At EFF, we've become all too accustomed to bad news on copyright coming out of Europe, so it's refreshing to hear that Portugal has recently passed a law on copyright that helps to strike a fairer balance between users and copyright holders on DRM. The law doesn't abolish legal...

Increased smartphone usage and availability of wireless broadband has propelled the use of Internet based platforms and services that often compete with similar services based on older technologies. For example services like Facebook, Skype and WhatsApp that offer voice or video calls over the Internet compete with traditional SMS and...

The National Symbols Officer of Australia recently wrote to Juice Media, producers of Rap News and Honest Government Adverts, suggesting that its “use” of Australia’s coat of arms violated various Australian laws. This threat came despite the fact that Juice Media’s videos are clearly satire and no reasonable...

This week security researchers announced a newly discovered vulnerability dubbed KRACK, which affects several common security protocols for Wi-Fi, including WPA (Wireless Protected Access) and WPA2. This is a bad vulnerability in that it likely affects billions of devices, many of which are...

E-Verify is a massive federal data system used to verify the eligibility of job applicants to work in the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) administer E-Verify. Until now, the federal government has not...

The USA Liberty Act fails to safeguard whistleblowers—both as federal employees and contractors—because of a total lack of protection from criminal prosecution. These shortcomings—which exist in other whistleblower protection laws—shine a light on much-needed Espionage Act reform, a law that has been used to stifle anti-war speech and punish...

Today EFF and 56 other civil society organizations have sent an open letter [PDF] to European lawmakers outlining our grave concerns with Article 13 of the proposed new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which would impose a new responsibility on Internet platforms to filter content that...

A key legal linchpin for the National Security Agency’s vast Internet surveillance program is scheduled to disappear in under 90 days. Section 702 of FISA—enacted in 2008 with little public awareness about the scope and power of the NSA’s surveillance of the Internet—supposedly directs the NSA’s powerful surveillance apparatus...

Professor Xiaoxing Xi, a physics professor with Temple University, was the subject of government surveillance under a FISA order. During September's Color of Surveillance Hill briefing, Professor Xi told his story of the devastating impact of government surveillance on his life.

On the last day to act on legislation in 2017, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill creating a firewall between the state's data and any attempt by the federal government to create lists, registries, or databases based on a person's religion, nationality, or ethnicity. S.B. 31 was...

California Gov. Jerry Brown used the weekend to veto one of 2017's last remaining bills to shine light on police practices. S.B. 345 was pretty straightforward: every law enforcement agency would have to upload its policies and training materials to its public website—but only documents that would be available...

Today, the the Trump Administration announced the decertification of the Iranian nuclear deal agreed by the previous administration. It's the strongest sign of many showing that the U.S. government intends to take a new and more confrontational line against Iran. But long before the decertification, tech companies were making...